Servants
by Aurora West
Summary: The Vorta, one drabble at a time.
1. Eris

Disclaimer: _Star Trek: Deep Space 9_ is the property of Paramount Pictures.

Author's note: I plan to write one drabble focussing on a different Vorta every day, ultimately ending up with at least one for each named Vorta.

Eris appears in the season two episode 'The Jem'Hadar'.

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><p>Eris is trapped in the Alpha Quadrant when the Federation mines the Anomaly; one of ten thousand Vorta who has been cut off from the Dominion's home territory until Central Operations on Terok Nor can take down the minefield. Of course, the Cardassian Union <em>is<em> Dominion territory now, but it doesn't feel like _home_ the way so many of the Gamma Quadrant systems do. The people are different; she's used to a certain amount of deference, and most Vorta have perfected that piercing, unblinking violet stare that encourages it further when it's slow in appearing.

It doesn't work on Cardassians. She notices this immediately from the glinn who mans the transporter pad at her new, hastily-reassigned posting. He eyes her in that way that males do who have never seen a Vorta; sizing up her paleness, her small frame, her delicate face, and deciding it's frailty. It's a common misconception – a mistake – and it makes the Vorta so good at what they do.

The glinn looks her boldly in the face and she can tell he's also sizing her up as a potential mate – in the basest sense – and she misses the Gamma Quadrant again; misses her own people, which is a feeling she's no stranger to after years of infiltrating non-Dominion worlds. But she'd been used to the idea of going home, and now she's going to be posted with Cardassians whom she can already tell will not respect her or what she represents.

She'd put in a request to Central Operations to be transferred, except she knows that every one of those ten thousand Vorta is in the same position that she is, up to the highest levels of command.

She motions to her Jem'Hadar, gives the glinn an imperious look, and leaves the transporter room. The faster that minefield comes down, the better.


	2. Gelnon

Author's note: Gelnon appears in the season six episodes 'One Little Ship' and 'Honor Among Thieves'.

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><p>This isn't the first time Gelnon has negotiated with a crime syndicate. He seems to get selected for these assignments whenever they arise – maybe he has the right face for it; maybe he looks like he can take care of himself. Whatever the reason, he's been sent into numerous syndicates in the Gamma Quadrant, and now here he is on Farius Prime, sinking the Dominion's hooks into the Orion Syndicate.<p>

From his penthouse suite that the Syndicate has so generously offered him for the duration of his stay, he can see most of the city sprawled before him in a dark, smoking, toxic-looking labyrinth. Another reason he's selected for these assignments, he supposes – most of his compatriots would see such a place and abhor it on instinct. The Founders value order above all things and the trait has been absorbed to varying degrees by their servants, but something about the chaos of worlds like Farius Prime appeals to Gelnon. Or maybe it's the order that appeals to him after all – the order deep within the chaos of an organization like the Orion Syndicate. He's good at finding it.

And he even regrets that he won't be here for long. Once his orders are carried out and the Klingon ambassador to this world has been assassinated, he'll go back to his ship and the more prosaic aspects of this war. It surprises him, as every feeling contrary to the wills of the Founders always does, how little he's looking forward to it.


	3. Yelgrun

Author's note: Yelgrun appears in the season six episode 'The Magnificent Ferengi'.

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><p>Yelgrun has a bad habit of befriending the prisoners. He knows it, his superiors know it – his <em>prisoners<em> know it, if they have half a brain. He can't help it. The Jem'Hadar are good at what they do – the way they wield those knives of theirs in close quarters; very impressive – but skilled conversationalists they are not. And Yelgrun likes to talk; always has. Prisoner of war transport is the perfect role for someone who likes to talk. Long hours; long hours that can turn to _boring_ hours, behind the lines and necessarily uneventful. He's met varied and multitudinous species over his ten lifetimes. Sometimes they're overtly hostile when he tries to make conversation, and that's understandable, of course, since much of the time he's transporting them to an internment camp where they'll spend the rest of their lives. But as often as not they're willing to engage with him. He's had several POWs destined for death quite affably try to bargain with him for their lives, and his apologetic tone when he explains that it's his strict orders to transport them to their executions always seems to give them the impression that they have a chance of changing his mind. He's been a bit rueful to see many of them go, to be sure – there was that Nausicaan, in particular, who really defied all expectations; quite good company, actually. It just went to show, appearances could be deceiving. But he's never actually been tempted to plead for mercy for any of them.

After all, they may have been friendly, fascinating people, but in the end they were the Dominion's enemies. And enemies of the Dominion deserved no mercy.


	4. Kilana

She's been mocked before for the earrings – Keevan, of course, that smug snake – but she keeps wearing them. Kilana has always maintained that she knows she's beautiful, and just because her own people can't see it, just because _she_ can't see it, doesn't mean she shouldn't take advantage of it and cultivate it. And she _does_ use it to her advantage; she's a negotiator, and she knows her pleasing face and the deeply-cut V neckline of her uniform provide a distraction that can prove fruitful for the Dominion.

Still, sometimes she wishes she could be more; she wonders if she's been so good at her job that she'll never be tipped for advancement. She's a little resentful, in her selfish moments, of her female compatriots who don't use their looks – at least, not more than any other Vorta – to get what they want. She mollifies herself with the knowledge that she may be a pretty face and a desirable body to the people she deals with, but it's her quick mind that has to turn that to her advantage.

And Keevan, for all his snideness, somehow hits upon her exact feelings when he says, "You're doing nothing but playing into your image of Vorta temptress when you wear those things." She hides her surprise at his perceptiveness, accidental or not, and almost responds, when he adds, "Anyway, you're just mutilating your ears."

And at that, she coldly tells him to go bother someone else. Mutilating her ears—ridiculous. She knows the earrings are pretty, and whether or not that means anything to her personally or any other Vorta is irrelevant. In the end, she can't do anything but take pride in her appearance, and if other Vorta can't understand that, then that's their failing, not hers.


	5. Keevan

Keevan's Federation prison cell is the most comfortable place he's ever lived. He isn't supposed to be living there, of course – he's supposed to have activated his termination implant so that the Federation can't interrogate him and so his next clone can be activated to take his place on some Jem'Hadar fighter. Another loyal servant of the Dominion. Except the Federation's interrogations are hardly worthy of the name – oh, there's the usual sensory and sleep deprivation, time disorientation, and attempts to wound his pride and ego, but there's nothing particularly unpleasant about it – and he's never felt the all-consuming loyalty to the Dominion that his predecessor did.

There comes a point – rather quickly, if truth be told – that he realizes he's perfectly content to spend the rest of this war in his cell, out of the fighting, away from the Jem'Hadar, and safe from a meaningless, messy death in battle. It isn't that he likes the Federation. Quite the contrary; it's a weak, spineless government, hamstrung by its own lofty, ridiculous ideals and destined to lose this war. Keevan has no sympathy for them. They know now what the Dominion is capable of, that it's crushing them even without its reinforcements and that once Central Operations opens the Anomaly the end will come swiftly, but still they refuse to do what they should. He has no respect for them and he hopes the Dominion wins this war – he just hopes that it's won without him. And when it's over, and the Federation and its ideals are yoked and subjugated by the Dominion, Keevan hopes he's far, far away. For all of its insipid principles, the Federation's interrogations are infinitely preferable to the debriefing he'd face from the Dominion. Exile, when it becomes necessary, will be even better.


	6. Deyos

At first, Deyos is irritated that he's been assigned as the supervisor of Internment Camp 371. Too close to the Anomaly, and he's never met an Alpha Quadrant species that he likes. Cardassians and Romulans – what unlikely partners, and yet the more he's forced to deal with them, the more he thinks they're perfectly suited to each other. It's too bad, he muses, that each respective government hadn't committed _more_ resources and manpower to their doomed attempt to destroy the Founders' homeworld. But then, Cardassians and Romulans are arrogant – one of their common traits – and their arrogance may have saved them this time. They still have fight in them; fight that the Dominion will have to crush once war inevitably breaks out.

The Dominion isn't arrogant. The Dominion doesn't hold back on the assumption that its machinations have been clever enough to take the enemy by surprise – even if they have. The Dominion gathers information and plans, and when it's ready it sends wave after wave of troops – that's why the Dominion never loses.

The arrogance does eventually seem to leave the Cardassians and Romulans at Internment Camp 371, though, especially once they see how the Jem'Hadar entertain themselves. Deyos drops a few vague threats to some of the more…troublesome prisoners that they may just find themselves in the fighting ring once the Jem'Hadar beat the spirit out of their stronger fellow inmates, and the Cardassians get even grayer while the Romulans look uneasy.

That's when he starts to enjoy himself.


	7. Kilana & Keevan

Happy Valentine's Day. :)

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><p>Kilana prefers not to get romantically involved with other Vorta. She loves her people—platonically. But they don't make the best lovers, and there are two quadrants full of other species to choose from. It was Weyoun, really. Weyoun's second clone, who might have broken her heart, or maybe that was just melodrama. In any case, if she's going to get involved, she chooses someone from another race. She likes humans, especially now that the Federation-Dominion War is a distant memory to them; something their grandparents may have fought in, but not them.<p>

And even if she _were_ to get involved with another Vorta, Keevan would be the last one she'd choose. So she can't explain why she's sharing a bottle of Terran wine with him on the Federation station Deep Space Nine, except that he asked if she would and she said yes. He's as smug as ever but some of the insipidness has gone – well, going through a few clones will give a Vorta some maturity, and Keevan is apparently no exception.

The wine certainly isn't strong enough to cause even the slightest amount of inebriation. She wishes it was. Then she could blame what happens on that – the fact that when their hands brush, it sends a tingle from the tips of her ears to her feet; that when Keevan casually takes her hand she doesn't snatch it away. Vorta don't do a very good job at seducing one another, and she's vaguely amused at the idea that that's what he's doing – _if_ that's what he's doing – though less amused at herself that she's letting it happen.

But he just lightly holds her hand in his while they talk. She's on her way to take up a post on the staff of the Dominion ambassador to the Federation. He's on his way back to Dominion space from the Klingon Empire. It was lucky chance – yes, lucky, she grudgingly admits to herself – that they encountered each other on the Promenade.

Part of her keeps waiting for the night to turn into more than it is. She doesn't know if she wants it to or not, and that indecision keeps her on a kind of delicious edge of anticipation that she recognizes for what it is. Nothing happens, except that eventually, regretfully, Keevan says he should be going.

There's a still moment between them, and then she kisses him swiftly, chastely – just to say, really, that if she's going to do what she doesn't do and get involved with another Vorta, maybe he wouldn't be the worst choice, after all.


	8. Borath

It may have been Eris who made first contact, but it's Borath who really gets inside the humans' _minds_. Not just the humans – there's a Trill, Joined, her symbiont's lifetimes' worth of memories reminding him of a Vorta, and a Romulan. Getting inside their minds is literal, of course, with the simulated reality. Borath has always been a scientist and the fact that he's been selected for this experiment delights him. When he got word that a reassignment was coming his way, he'd been concerned that he'd be moved from Kurill Prime's main cloning facility to a field supervisor position. With the Federation's incursions into the Gamma Quadrant becoming increasingly bold, more and more Vorta are being assigned to attack ships. Even Eris, he's heard, is now a field supervisor.

Borath, though, prefers the quiet order of a lab to the chaos of battle. He doesn't enjoy being in command of the Jem'Hadar – their minds are so rigid, so fixated on battle and bloodshed. There's no _discussion_ with them, no give-and-take of scientific dialogue, no diplomacy, just the single-minded purpose with which they were engineered. He's often wondered what sort of creature the Founders built the Jem'Hadar from – was there any such being, or are the Jem'Hadar an entirely invented race; the Founders' idea of a monster? Vorta are accustomed to Jem'Hadar but they _are_ a frightening people, with their horns and perpetual forbidding glares, and their tubes of ketracel white gurgling in their throats. To think, the only thing keeping an entire army of killers loyal is a tube of amino acids.

These Starfleet people aren't afraid enough of the Dominion – that's the one thing Borath learns, over and over, from the experiment. They've seen how the Jem'Hadar fight but they're defiant, and he has a feeling that they'll go to great lengths to keep the Dominion out of the Alpha Quadrant. If they do close the Anomaly—well, in two hundred years, the Dominion's borders will stretch all the way to Federation space, and then they won't _need_ the Anomaly. Borath hopes he sees that day. Scientific curiosity, after all.


	9. Luaran

There's something mildly troubling about the fact that the Dominion needs the Breen to win the war. Luaran, merely a field supervisor, isn't privy to any special information – just the same platitude and propaganda-laden dispatches from Central Operations that everyone else is – but it's clear that someone very high up doesn't trust the Jem'Hadar to win the fight against the Federation. Why else would all Jem'Hadar fighters be receiving the Breen energy dampening weapon? It will help; there's no doubt about that, but she's never seen such an undercurrent of…desperation in her superiors. The Cardassian Union was a strategic acquisition two years ago – the alliance with the Breen is a necessity. Luaran can barely contemplate the idea of the Dominion losing a war. In fact, she can't. It's inconceivable; the prospect is so ludicrous that she almost laughs. The Jem'Hadar on the bridge with her would take no notice if she did.

But her ship is docked at a Cardassian repair facility while that Breen weapon is installed, and that tells her the inconceivable, terrifying truth – the Founders think that the Dominion _might_ lose this war, and Luaran has no point of reference for that event. She knows what the Dominion does to worlds that resist it. If the unthinkable happens…will this be her last clone? Will the Vorta, the Jem'Hadar, the Founders be exterminated?

Her mind abruptly backs away from that thought. The Breen have been brought into the war to ensure victory for the Dominion. That's the only thing she needs to consider.


	10. Weyoun

For the first time he has all his memories, and he stares up into white nothingness while they coalesce into a chain stretching back centuries: Eight, who presided over the loss of the war, the attempted genocide of the Cardassian people; Seven, caught between too many rocks and hard places; Six, defective and skeptical and troubled; Five, the one who brought the line to new heights, whom none of the successors ever felt they measured up to; Four, who had known he was destined for something greater than being a mere field supervisor; Three, the fighter, the only one who had died in battle, on a suicide run that he had ordered; Two, the negotiator, too clever for his own good, perhaps; One, the bureaucrat; and their progenitor – and who could describe him? He was all of them and none of them and more and less, and his memories were a hazy, distant blur.

Weyoun Nine breathes deeply and slowly the way he's been instructed to do by a disembodied voice above him in that white space; his body needs to adjust to life; to breathing and seeing and remembering and all of it; he can feel the biometric fluid dripping from him and he tries to move his fingers and they _wiggle_, and it's the most amazing sensation in a succession of amazing sensations. Everything is new and old at the same time.

"I'm still not certain it was a good idea to include the defective clone's memories," the voice above him murmurs.

Weyoun blinks, focuses his eyes towards the sound; the whiteness finally dims and he sees another Vorta for the first time, and then hears an answer from someone else. "The order came directly from the Link."

And Weyoun knows, suddenly, why he's here; knows it was Odo who hunted down his genetic imprint; Odo who blessed him as he died, and who now has made sure to find all his clones' memories and make him whole. Because that's what he feels – _whole_, in a way that Six, Seven, and Eight never did; his actions and orders and doubts and feelings all contextualized at last by the interwoven memories.

He clears his throat and the Vorta in his field of vision turns her head to look at him. And Weyoun Nine smiles, then opens his mouth to speak for the first time.


	11. Weyoun & Eris

Author's note: Ee is mentioned in the DS9 relaunch book _Rising Son_.

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><p>Weyoun bought a necklace for her on the market world of Ee. The merchant assured him it was high quality work; one-of-a-kind craftsmanship, and it wasn't until later when he saw the same piece of jewelry being sold at another stall that he realized he'd been swindled. He didn't really care about the money; after all, he didn't find much to spend his stipend on – it had been accumulating for months – but he was a little shocked that anyone would tell such a bald-faced lie to a Vorta with two Jem'Hadar standing behind him, watching the proceedings with that implacable stare of theirs.<p>

Still, it was a nice little thing, and Eris seemed to appreciate the way it caught the light and threw it back in vermillion sparkles just as much as he did. She slipped it over her head and for a few moments, the two of them looked at it laying against her uniform, Eris craning her neck downwards and Weyoun tilting his head in study.

"Does it make me look more or less aesthetically pleasing?" she finally asked, glancing up to him and meeting his eyes.

"More," he decreed, because he knew it was the proper response. When she raised her eyebrows, he admitted, "I don't know. Do you like it?"

She nodded, then secreted it beneath her shirt. With a slight smile, she said, "It can be a family heirloom. I'll pass it along to my next clone."


	12. Kilana 2

Captain Sisko _is_ striking – that's one of the few truths that passes Kilana's lips in those fraught days on Torga IV. He's the first human that she's ever met and he's the opposite of Vorta in every way – tall and dark, with that resonant voice, and direct. She knows that he's dealt with three of her people previously. Eris, Borath, and Weyoun had submitted reports which all said variations of the same things, but chief among them was one pertinent fact: Benjamin Sisko was not susceptible to Vorta charm, to Vorta finesse – to Vorta manipulation.

All three of them had also noted a typical Federation quality – a nobility in one's ideals; holding oneself to a very particular standard, that Sisko had possessed. He'd wanted to help in two cases (Weyoun had noted: _Sisko was reluctant to aid us but the prospect of untold millions of Federation casualties on his conscience was enough to win his assistance_).

More than once, she's tempted to give him some part of the truth about why she's here. Sisko thinks she wants the ship – she couldn't care less about the _ship_. She doesn't care if it falls into the Federation's hands. That's a petty concern compared to the one that looms larger and larger with each passing hour – that the Founder inside the ship will die. That he'll die because of her failure, which will mean termination for her, but she couldn't care less about that, either. _All_ she cares about is her god; wounded, trapped, and helpless.

In the end, she'll note something else about Captain Sisko: put him in the wrong circumstances, and he could become stubborn, implacable, and unreasonable. And Kilana, her crew dead, the Founder dead, is guilty of the same things.


	13. Eris 2

Author's note: I didn't want to change the rating of the entire fic for one drabble, but be warned, while this one doesn't contain anything graphic, **it does contain references to rape and suicide**.

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><p>Once, and only once, Eris is tortured. She's good at not getting caught in the first place, but even the best spies make mistakes, and her mistake is exacerbated by the fact that somehow, her captors know about her termination implant. Her hands are kept bound at all times but the insulting thing is that they don't even post a guard. They assume she doesn't have the physical strength to break her bonds and the maddening thing is that they're right. There's nothing technologically sophisticated about any of it; not her restraints, not her cell, and certainly not the torture itself, which is pain and humiliation and more pain.<p>

At first she just…resists. They want to know who she is; what she is; why she's been sent. She doesn't break. But there comes a day, finally, when she thinks she might die, when her captors take that ultimate expression of affection between two individuals and twist it into the most horrific thing that's ever happened to her. It hurts – terribly – but it isn't that, it's the degradation, the brutal abasement of not just her, but something that many of her happy memories contain. It's the cruel amusement on their faces, and the fact that they stop asking her questions. They stop asking her questions but they keep doing what they're doing because they _enjoy_ it; and when they finally leave her alone she doesn't care about her bruised and bloodied face or any of her other, myriad wounds, all dripping blood. The ache inside of her is worse than all of it and she tries, desperately, to activate her implant against any protrusion in the cell. But a Vorta's termination implant was designed to be accessible in one very specific way, and deep down, she knows that she can bash the back of her skull against the metal frame of her bed all she wants – it's not going to provide her with a way out.

So she plans. She takes all her hurt and humiliation and she turns it to anger, and she plans how to die – because that's the only way this will end. Death, merciful death, and activation far away from here, and she doesn't care if it's at her captors' hands or her own. The next Eris clone will remember all of this but it won't be the sharp-edged recollection of actual experience. It will be dulled just enough to be a lesson, and then she'll never tell anyone what happened here on this miserable planet.

Her revenge will be its defeat by the Dominion.


	14. Weyoun 2

"Weyoun, if you could have anything in the universe, what would it be?"

"The knowledge that I've served the Founders well," Weyoun answered promptly.

"Besides that," Odo sighed.

Weyoun blinked at him. "Why do you ask?"

Odo looked determined. "Because your people are slaves, and I want to know how _you'd_ like to carry out your lives."

"Vorta want nothing more than to serve the Founders." Weyoun stopped and drew in a sharp breath, struck by an appalling thought. "I...I _am_ serving you well aren't I, Odo?"

Ignoring the question – which was as good as a 'yes', so Weyoun relaxed – Odo said, "But your vision, your taste – you have no sense of aesthetics; you can't have families…"

"The Founders made us the way they did for their own reasons."

"You shouldn't have to worship changelings because it's built into your genetic code," Odo said, an edge to his voice that made Weyoun nervous.

He remained silent for a long moment. Weyoun trusted Odo. But there was still the terrifying prospect that whatever he said would eventually make its way back to the rest of the Founders. His concept of how the Link worked was hazy. How much of himself was Odo capable of...staying? Was any individuality retained in the Great Link or was every Founder's consciousness truly subsumed into a unified whole? The idea of his personal opinions being known was enough for Weyoun to keep his mouth clamped tightly shut. He truly, _truly_ didn't care that his faith was genetically ingrained in him. What did it matter where faith came from, in the end?

"I appreciate what you're trying to do for us," he finally said, hoping his sincerity was plain enough in his tone. "But the Vorta exist to serve the Founders. If we aren't, then…" How best to put it? "...then our existence is pointless."

"You should have free will," Odo said flatly.

"We do," Weyoun replied, and he heard a strange note of reassurance in his voice. Well, Odo needed to believe this. He needed to believe that failing to change the Vorta wasn't a failure in his quest to remake the Dominion. Hesitating, he added, "My life is as much my own as I could ever want it to be."

Odo stared at him for a moment, then harrumphed. Not a victory, then – they would return to this subject – but at least an allaying of the discussion for now.

There was silence between them, and then Weyoun turned to look at Odo sheepishly. "There _is_ one thing," he said.

"And what's that?"

Weyoun hesitated again, then said, "I must admit that I've always wished I could...sing."

For a second, Odo didn't respond, but then he said gruffly, "Well, that's a start."


End file.
